Unconscious phonetic convergence causes people to imitate others' accents
the verdict
SUPPORTED
the evidence backs this
confidence 75/100
Evidence from speech motor control, predictive coding, and sensorimotor integration strongly supports the view that people unintentionally imitate others' phonetic patterns through auditory-motor mechanisms.
Evidence for · 3
Active inference and speech motor control.
2026 · cited by 0
Paper 3 describes active inference frameworks that explicitly model how hearing other voices leads to phonetic convergence through sensory prediction error minimization.
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More for · 2
Prediction and imitation in speech.
2013 · cited by 0
Paper 9 reviews how speakers automatically imitate phonetic properties of heard voices and models this convergence as a consequence of sensorimotor prediction error correction.
Speech motor control is not sequestered from general auditory processes.
2026 · cited by 0
Paper 10 demonstrates that short-term changes in speech perception directly influence speech production, linking general auditory processing to phonetic convergence.